Tock of the Town

Public clocks are back.

Big time.

Last year’s graduating class of Chapman University in Orange donated a street clock to the school. Restoration of the 1930s Stedman Jewelers Clock on Harbor Boulevard in Fullerton is being funded by the city’s redevelopment agency. Community efforts are underway to restore the 80-year-old William H. Spurgeon Building clock on 4th Street in Santa Ana.

Why all the fuss over big tickers?

“Time and temperature lighting up on the side of a building--it’s not the same as a street clock with hands and a face up in a tower,” said Phil Birgandi, an Orange history buff now living in Hemet.

There have been street clocks in downtown Orange since the 1880s, Birgandi said. One of the two now at the circular Orange Plaza is free standing, while the other, added as part of a 1982 remodel, is attached to the Swift & Swift building. (The owners replaced its modern facade with a more historic style.)

The truly old clocks on the Plaza are gone--which isn’t to say they’re not still in the county. The clock that had stood in front of Huff-Rice Jewelers since the 1920s, for instance, now resides in Laguna Beach.

Folks in both towns were all wound up over the move.

Laguna Beach florist Jack Eschbach bought the 15-foot clock in 1975, but the powers-that-were in Orange didn’t want to see it go, said Dan Kenney, a former Laguna Beach mayor now living in Redstone, Colo.

The excavation permit was denied.

“It was legitimately sold, but somebody tried to renege on the transaction,” Kenney recalled. So a Laguna Beach contingent went to Orange under cover of darkness to claim its property.

“Jack pretty much engineered it,” Kenney said. “He and some others went up there, got it and somehow transported it to Laguna Beach.”

The clock was soon installed in front of Eschbach’s flower store.

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After Eschbach died in 1984, the clock fell into disrepair and stopped running. Kenney initiated city efforts to restore it.

“Jack was kind of a visionary,” Kenney said. “When everyone was going plastic because it was new, and aluminum because it was new, Jack was saying we need to preserve things that will make us a little different from the towns around us. He was right. By preserving the village charm, that’s exactly what happened.”

Thanks to touches such as Eschbach’s clock, Kenney said, “Laguna Beach has come to exemplify historical values.”

The city now owns and maintains the cast-iron clock, which is bolted to the sidewalk.

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James Espy of the National Assn. of Watch and Clock Collectors, who helped locate and restore the clock that students recently gave to Chapman University, says it is identical to the clock in front of Blackman’s Ltd. Jewelers in Newport Beach for more than 20 years.

Both clocks were made by E. Howard of Boston and date from the 1850s. Both are 14 feet tall; the diameter of the double faces is about 3 feet.

When Bruce Blackman bought his clock--for next to nothing--it had stood unused for quite some time and needed total renovation. He enlisted the aid of friends and other interested parties.

“It took lots of hours of labor,” Blackman said, “but it was a fun project. The laminated wood was full of dry rot. A cabinetmaker who rented space from a friend of mine [replaced] that for nothing. The bottom of the case didn’t have windows--we milled those out and put in beveled glass. It turned into a community project.”

One good renovation deserves another. Several years ago, Blackman was approached by a man who had rescued the movement from a similar street clock, made by E. Howard around 1890; it had been smashed by a truck. Blackman let him take the Lido clock apart to make molds. The hit-and-run victim is now alive and well and running in a front yard in north San Diego County.

“There was a period when street signs and clocks were passe,” Blackman said. “But people are always checking their own clocks with ours. It’s not electric, it’s an old fashion windup thing, and if I forget to wind it, people call.”

Blackman hopes it’ll be there for a long time.

“The weight alone that runs this clock is 107 pounds,” he said. “That’s a big block of lead. This clock would go through sleet and snow and ice and everything else.”

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These clocks are survivors, all right, and it figures that a lifeguard would have just such a story.

Marine safety Capt. Lynn Hughes, in charge of maintaining the clock at San Clemente Marine Safety Headquarters until last year, said his most vivid memory of the clock after more than 20 years on the job involves a twister.

“The tower that supports the two faces--one face points south, the other points north--has a hatch on it,” Hughes explained. “It’s normally quite secure, well-anchored down.

“About five years ago, a water spout came onto the beach, aimed at the clock tower and ripped that top right off. You know that lightning bolt that energized the time machine in ‘Back to the Future’? This was a similar experience. We realized that water spouts, though fairly small, localized and short term, can have enormous force.

“It did damage--but the clock tower withstood Mother Nature.”

The best thing about the 40-foot clock, which is near the San Clemente Pier, is that people don’t have to worry about wearing a wristwatch to the beach.

“People can observe the time for half a mile in either direction,” Hughes said. That means kids never have the excuse of not knowing what time it is.

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What distinguishes the clock tower at Irvine Civic Center is that it, well, towers over the rest of the complex.

“It’s probably an additional four stories above the civic center--that makes six stories in all,” noted John McAllister, the facility’s maintenance superintendent. “It’s a focal point of the Civic Center, and we’re very proud of it. It makes it easy for people to find the building.”

The clock has four white faces, backlighted so they can be seen at night, and raised surface numerals.

The tower, which is only 6 years old, employs a yellow steel frame that comes to a peak above the clock. Its function doesn’t stop at time and location.

“A number of programs have used the clock tower for promotional purposes, for hanging banners and that sort of thing,” McAllister said. “D.A.R.E. officers rappelled from the top of the tower to dramatize Red Ribbon Week. We also tied yellow ribbons up there. Birds of prey, owls and hawks, make nests in some enclosures up there. Unfortunately, you find the remains of their carnage.”

McAllister doesn’t actually find the carnage himself.

“It’s the maintenance people who come back with the stories of what they found,” he said. “I started to go up there once to figure out why we had a maintenance contract for cleaning the gears and so on. I got up to about the third platform. As soon as I felt the swaying of the tower, I decided the contract was well worth the money.”

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Windup clocks such as Blackman’s may be an endangered species. But history buff Birgandi, for one, has no idea which among the county’s public clocks have been electrified.

“I’d have to go stand next to them and listen,” Birgandi said.

Espy, of the collectors association, believes the percentage is high.

“Some of these clocks are marvelous pieces of art and workmanship,” Espy said. “But I would wager that 90% of them, including the older ones, now have electric movement. After a city restores a street clock and gets it back in running order, it’s not how it was when it was originally put there. It ain’t like it used to be.

“To us [in the association], if it doesn’t tick, it doesn’t hold a whole lot of interest.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s not a whole lot of interest for the rest of us.

The clock at Plummer Auditorium, for instance, on the campus of Fullerton Union High School, is not a windup model, but it is high in nostalgia, not to mention just plain high: the tower is 135 feet tall and the clock about two-thirds the way up.

The Fullerton landmark was installed Aug. 25, 1932. It was made by the Seth Thomas Clock Co. of Thomaston, Conn. The serial number is 2957. The original dial and hands were installed March 23, 1933, at 9:26 a.m. All that information and more is outlined on a plaque at the tower’s base.

Plastic hands were installed 25 years ago, according to Walt de Jong, head of auditorium maintenance. This past New Year’s Eve, those plastic hands snapped in high winds in three places and had to be replaced.

“It operates on an electronic pulse from the school bell system,” de Jong explained. “It’s a minute-by-minute clock--it turns on the minute, not every second. There’s an auto correction sequence: If winds were to cause some electrical failure, at the 59th minute it corrects itself. Let’s say the time is 1:59, and the clock shows 1:35, it automatically pulses forward to the 59th minute so that it will always be 00 on the hour.

“It’s very low-maintenance.”

On the occasion of Fullerton Union’s centennial in 1993, the late George Jeffrey, class of ‘34, told a story about how a steer got stuck in the clock tower.

Rudy Kauble recently set the record straight.

“It was a calf,” Kauble said. “They walked it up the stairs, and called the Fire Department to get it down. The students weren’t even allowed up there. Supposedly it was locked up, but a janitor apparently forgot to lock it that day.

“It wasn’t malicious. That was 60 years ago; those were different times. There used to be a mural there with bare-bosomed women washing clothes down by a creek. . . . Anyway, it was just a prank, class of ’38. Not my class--I was ‘39!”

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There are as many clock stories in the county as the hours are long, but among the grandest is the stunt performed by the “Original Human Fly” on the Spurgeon clock tower.

Buildering--climbing buildings for sport, unprotected--is illegal now. But, in a story detailed in Jim Sleeper’s “3rd Orange County Almanac,” Jack Williams scaled the side of the Spurgeon building Feb. 28, 1919. Williams continued up the clock tower to the top of the flagpole, where he did a handstand--to the delight of the crowd witnessing the spectacle from five stories below.

The showboat human fly didn’t let the attention go for naught: On the back of his shirt was scrawled, “1919 Chevrolet, $845.”